They murdered Mark Duggan they murdered Smiley Culture and they wanted to strangle this young man. Now I understand why people call the police FILTH!

Scotland Yard is facing a racism scandal after a black man used his mobile phone to record police officers subjecting him to a tirade of abuse in which he was told: "The problem with you is you will always be a nigger".

The recording, obtained by the Guardian, was made by the 21-year-old after he was stopped in his car, arrested and placed in a police van the day after last summer's riots.

The man, from Beckton, east London, said he was made to feel "like an animal" by police. He has also accused one officer of kneeling on his chest and strangling him.

In the recording, a police officer can be heard admitting he strangled the man because he was "a cunt". Moments later, another officer – identified by investigators as PC Alex MacFarlane – subjects the man to a succession of racist insults and adds: "You'll always have black skin. Don't hide behind your colour."

The Independent Police Complaints Commission referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service on the basis that three officers, including MacFarlane, may have committed criminal offences.

The CPS initially decided no charges should be brought against any of the police officers. However on Thursday, the service said it would review the file after lawyers for the man threatened to challenge the decision in a high court judicial review. MacFarlane has been suspended.

The inquiry began after the victim handed his mobile phone to a custody desk in Forest Gate police station and told officers he had been abused.

Earlier, he had been driving through Beckton with a friend when he was stopped by a van containing eight police officers from Newham borough. London's streets were flooded with police who had been drafted in to contain the rioting.

The officers arrested the man on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs and told him he was being taken to a police station to be searched. After being taken into the van, the man was also arrested for missing a previous magistrates court appearance. No further action is to be taken in relation to the suspected driving offence.

It was once inside the van and handcuffed that the man said he was assaulted by police. He described having his head pushed against the van window and said one officer placed his knees on his chest and began strangling him. "I couldn't breathe and I felt that I was going to die," he said.

The man said he decided to turn on the recording facility of his phone after MacFarlane allegedly made sexually explicit references about his mother and telling him he would be "dead in five years".

In the recording, the man sounds agitated; he raises his voice to complain about his treatment and in places insults the arresting officers. The verbal exchange lasts several minutes.

When the man tells an officer: "you tried to strangle me", the officer replies: "No, I did strangle you." The officer adds that he strangled him "'cos you're a cunt" and that the man had been "kicking out". In relation to the strangling, the officer says: "Stopped you though, didn't it?"

Minutes later MacFarlane, who is white, begins abusing the man. After a period of silence, he can be heard telling him: "The problem with you is you will always be a nigger, yeah? That's your problem, yeah."

The man reads out MacFarlane's badge number and complains that he had subjected him to racist comments: "I'll always be a nigger – that's what you said, yeah?"

Shortly before the recording ends, the man can be heard saying: "I get this all the time." He then tells the officer: "We'll definitely speak again about this … It's gonna go all the way, it's gonna go all the way – remember."

The man's lawyer, Michael Oswald, said: "By his own efforts our client has put before the CPS exceptionally strong evidence and we share his astonishment that the CPS have reached a decision that no police officer should be prosecuted on the basis of that evidence. We do welcome their agreement to review that decision and we now await the outcome of that review."

The CPS initially said charges should not be brought against MacFarlane because the remarks did not cause the man harassment, distress or alarm.

Grace Ononiwu, deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London, said: "Lawyers for [the complainant] have written to the CPS and asked us to review our decision. I have considered the matter personally and directed that all the evidence should be reconsidered and a fresh decision taken by a senior lawyer with no previous involvement in this matter."Speaking to the Guardian, the 21-year-old was visibly shaken when recounting the ordeal. "It's hard to explain, but it makes you feel like a piece of shit – it makes you feel not even human," he said.

"I was glad that I had it on the recording. I knew that if I had it saved I could show that I had been abused.

"It's not right. We've just got different skin colour – underneath it we're all the same."

The Metropolitan police confirmed in a statement that it received a complaint on 11 August about alleged "racial" remarks and oppressive conduct.

"These are serious allegations; any use of racist language or excessive use of force is not acceptable."

The force said it had referred the case to the IPCC and that one officer had been suspended.

MacFarlane's solicitor, Colin Reynolds, said: "The officer has been the subject of an investigation, has co-operated in that and been advised he is not to be the subject of criminal proceedings."

Estelle du Boulay, director of the Newham Monitoring Project, said: "Sadly, the shocking treatment of this young man at the hands of police officers – both the physical brutality he describes and the racial abuse he claims he suffered – are by no means unusual; it compares to other reports we have received. What makes this case different is the victim had the foresight and courage to turn on a recording device on his mobile phone."

She compared the incident to the case of Liam Stacey, a student who was jailed for 56 days for posting offensive comments on Twitter after the on-pitch collapse of the Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba.

I have today been notified that Dick Fedorcio, the Metropolitan Police Service Director of Public Affairs, has resigned. In July 2011 the IPCC received a referral from the Metropolitan Police Authority in relation Mr Fedorcio. We decided to independently investigate the relationship between Mr Fedorcio and Neil Wallis, a former deputy editor at the News of the World, focusing on the circumstances under which a contract for senior level media advice and support was awarded to Mr Wallis company, Chamy Media.

That investigation concluded and a report was sent to the MPS Directorate of Professional Standards on 10 January 2012. Our investigation found that Mr Fedorcio has a case to answer in relation to his procurement of the contract for Chamy Media. Last week the Metropolitan Police Service proposed to initiate proceedings for gross misconduct and I agreed with that proposal. In light of Mr Fedorcio's resignation today, those proceedings cannot now take place and I propose to publish our investigation report detailing our findings, in the next few days.

Murdoch control's ALL news that comes out of Australia . I would imagine the cops are as bent and as much in Murdoch's pocket as they are at Scotland Yard ,this is going nowhere. Murdoch has paid well to be untouchable and will continue to do so !

Breakdown of potentially illegal payments by national newspapers

A detailed look at what each national newspaper paid private investigator Steve Whittamore for data about celebrities, politicians and ordinary members of the public. . Credit: The Daily Mail DAILY MAIL (INCLUDING WEEKEND MAGAZINE): SPENT £143,150 ON 1,728 REQUESTS

David Cameron "almost certainly" breached the ministerial code by failing to call in his independent adviser on ministers' interests to investigate claims against the former Defence Secretary Liam Fox, a Whitehall watchdog said yesterday.

Dr Fox resigned last year after he was found guilty of breaching the code over his relations with his friend Adam Werritty, following allegations initially investigated internally by the Ministry of Defence and then by Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary.

Sir Philip Mawer, who was Mr Cameron's adviser on ministerial interests at the time, has expressed his "frustration" that the Prime Minister did not call him in to handle the case. Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, said he shared Sir Philip's concerns.

He told the House of Commons Public Administration Committee yesterday: "On this occasion, I think he should have been employed. Indeed, I think it was almost certainly a breach of the ministerial code that he was not employed."

Sir Christopher added: "Just like the parliamentary commissioner [on standards], the adviser should be able to initiate inquiries of their own where there is a prima facie case to investigate, whereas at the moment he is only able to do so at the request of the Prime Minister."

There is an open secret at the Leveson inquiry. The judge knows it; the lawyers all know it; the witnesses from the press – including the editors – all know it. In fact only one significant party is kept in the dark: the public in whose name the inquiry acts.

And it’s not a small secret but a huge one, an entire database relating to illegal activity carried out at the behest of journalists working for national newspapers over a number of years. Occasionally it is mentioned in public evidence at the inquiry, almost always in vague and general terms. Yet there is nothing vague about it; it brims with detail.

It names journalists who commissioned thousands of actions which they must or should have known were, on the face of it, illegal. It records dates and payments for these transactions. It identifies the members of the public who were targets of this activity – thousands of them, although only a handful have been told it happened.

This secret has been secret too long, and the prevailing situation at the inquiry, of nudge-nudge-wink-wink exclusive knowledge, cannot be justified legally or morally. The only beneficiaries are journalists who have done wrong and their employers, and a public inquiry into press conduct has no business covering up wrongdoing by journalists.

It is time the Motorman files were made public. They should be redacted to protect the privacy of the victims but otherwise they should be published in their entirety and in a way that clearly shows which journalists commissioned what activities for which newspapers at what prices. Then let journalists and newspapers justify their actions if they can.

What are the Motorman files?

Motorman was an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2003 into the activities of Steve Whittamore, a private investigator who for years ran a lucrative business providing press clients with addresses, phone numbers, car registrations and other information. Some of this information was legally available and some not: there is no legal way of acquiring records from the Police National Computer, the DVLA or BT’s ‘friends and family‘ database.

Though Whittamore and three associates were eventually convicted, no journalist or newspaper was prosecuted. That decision has been challenged and defended many times and the argument is now a barren one. There is no public interest today in prosecuting journalists for commissioning Whittamore and it will not happen; there is, however, a compelling public interest in the fullest possible disclosure of the files.

Yet when Hacked Off asked the Leveson Inquiry and the Information Commissioner’s Office to redact and publish them, they both said no.

In the past, the Information Commissioner has revealed that 305 journalists working for 32 publications generated 17,000 purchase orders with Whittamore in the years up to 2003. Many were innocent but several thousand involved prima facie breaches of the law. Breaking the Data Protection Act can be justified if it is done in the public interest, to uncover wrongdoing, say, or to prevent crime. Some newspapers say their reporters acted for reasons of that kind but the Information Commissioner said most stories were so trivial they could never qualify as in the public interest. Either way, the newspapers’ sweeping claims that they did nothing illegal have never been tested.

A major donor to the Conservative Party proposed the dilution of workplace rights in a report which won the backing of David Cameron but was blocked by the Liberal Democrats.

Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist who has given £593,000 to the Conservatives since Mr Cameron became leader in 2005, recommended companies be allowed to sack unproductive workers at will. The businessman, whose interests include payday loans company Wonga.com, argued that "coasting" workers inhibit economic growth and deter employers from recruiting.

Many of his sweeping proposals would have gone ahead if the Tories governed alone, Lib Dem ministers claimed, because Nick Clegg's party could not have mounted its strong rearguard action inside the Coalition.

Following the cash-for-access row, some civil servants are said to be worried about the involvement of a Tory donor in the Government's policy-making process. "It has raised eyebrows," said one Whitehall source.

Peter Cruddas, the Tories' former co-treasurer, claimed to undercover reporters that big donors could have their ideas fed into the Downing Street policy unit – a charge denied by No 10.

Cameron allies insist there was no reason to bar Mr Beecroft from advising the Government because he had given money to the Tories. He was not among the Tory donors entertained by Mr Cameron at Downing Street or Chequers and there is no suggestion that his companies would have benefited directly from the reforms he proposed.

His report, submitted last autumn, remains shrouded in mystery. Unusually for a Government-ordered study, it has not been published. Downing Street is coy about who commissioned it. The driving force is believed to be Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron's strategy adviser, who is leaving No 10 in May.

Ministers believe the report has not been published as it is too sensitive. Ideas are said to include watering down maternity rights, which would have jeopardised Mr Cameron's goal of making Britain the most "family-friendly" country in Europe. Another official said: "His report was full of the Tory millionaires' philosophy that government should not interfere in anything."

Mr Beecroft's plan for "no fault dismissal" was taken up by Mr Cameron and George Osborne, the Chancellor. It would allow a company to fire unproductive workers without the right to claim unfair dismissal, but they would receive statutory redundancy pay.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, whose department is responsible for employment law, said he did not want to bring in a "hire and fire culture". Unlike Mr Beecroft, he detected little demand for such rules.

After a row in the Coalition, a compromise was reached in which Mr Cable agreed to consider "no-fault dismissal" for firms employing fewer than 10 people. But he said he has no intention of bringing it in. A Liberal Democrat source said: "It's in the long, long grass."

Ed Miliband will today seek to capitalise on the cash-for-access controversy by linking it to the Budget. He will say: "The last week has shown this Government for what it is: one that works for the millionaires... David Cameron prefers to listen to those who have given millions of pounds to the Conservative Party in exchange for donor dinners and special access in Downing Street."

The Labour leader will issue a five-point "action plan" to help a squeezed "Middle Britain" similar to the credit-card sized "pledge card" which helped Tony Blair win a landslide in 1997. The plan includes stopping the Budget's "granny tax" and the reduction in the 50p top rate. In an attempt to reassure voters worried that Labour would spend too much, Mr Miliband will say: "These are measures that do not require extra spending. But they do require a different set of priorities; different values; a government that is on your side, and sometimes the courage to take on powerful and well-financed organisations which will not like it."...read more

Publishing giant News International has announced that it is to offer its employees a fresh social media distraction from Thursday morning when staff will be able to log into an officially sanctioned social network.

The platform is seen as a way of internalising communication whilst ensuring that staff at the sprawling Wapping base can more easily remain in touch.

In an email to staff the firm stated: “On Thursday 29 March we will be launching Chatter, News International's private and secure internal social network. Chatter brings the best features of social network tools such as Facebook and Twitter, allowing you to share information and expertise across the business."

The report also contained "flawed references, fanciful conclusions and baseless accusations which have been disproved in overseas courts," the firm said. Media company News Corp. is the owner of MarketWatch, the publisher of this report.

Rupert Murdoch declined to be interviewed for this program, as did 30 of his company directors, executives and journalists approached by FRONTLINE. He has, however, agreed to answer questions at a British government inquiry in late April.

As a young man, he developed an extensive rap sheet — auto and property theft, burglary, and fraudulent bank deposits were among his 50 plus arrests — and he served sentences at several notorious California prisons.

After his release, Hanks teamed up with a private investigator, his late partner Fred Valis, but Hanks still didn’t exactly live life on the straight and narrow. As they told 60 Minutes in 1993, the pair set up phone lines for the Gambino crime family’s bookmaking operations — while doubling as FBI informants. Their shady dealings on that and other cases earned them the nicknames “Vermin” and “Pestilence.” One man they hunted took it a step farther, describing them as “two pieces of puke.”

Now on his own with a certificate of rehabilitation and a private investigator’s license, Hanks has turned his investigative skills into a profitable business providing information to the media. He’s worked as a staff investigator on a number of tabloid television shows, such as Hard Copy and A Current Affair, and has also contributed to newspapers, including the New York Post.

“Many people in our industry have received credit for the work [Hanks and his partner] have done, myself included,” Steve Dunleavy, a former New York Post columnist says in an endorsement on Hanks’ website.

So when FRONTLINE began reporting Murdoch’s Scandal, we called Hanks, who seemed like just the guy to give us to get a better sense of the “dark arts” of how private investigators work with media companies here in America.

Usually, clients task Hanks with searching databases for addresses or phone numbers. It’s all perfectly legal and makes good economic sense, Hanks explains: The information is in the public record, and it’s more efficient to hire him to locate somebody than to mobilize a camera crew to the wrong address.

Gaining access to someone’s personal information starts with a simple search. Hanks subscribes to databases that allow him to search public documents and records across the country. These databases — popular ones include Accurint, Merlin, and Lexis-Nexis — reference data that is publicly available, and for a small fee, Hanks can find out everything he’d ever want to know about anyone in the country.

As a layer of protection, these databases often expunge parts of people’s Social Security numbers (SSN), but different records truncate different parts of the number — some databases might only publish the first five digits, while a court filing might include the last four instead. It only takes a few keystrokes, then, for an experienced investigator to assemble a full SSN.

Hanks describes gaining access to a SSN as getting “the keys to the kingdom”: With an SSN, an investigator can locate even more information, such as relatives, property records, voter registration records, registered motor vehicles, and bankruptcies. Clever use of these databases, Hanks explains, “tells [a] life story for $15.”

With information from public records, an investigator can move on to “pretexting,” also known as “blagging” in Great Britain. Basically it’s a simple role play: An investigator uses information he already has to try to extract more.

For years, investigators used pretexting to obtain phone records, and for tabloids, those records can provide useful evidence. A frequently dialed phone number, for example, might signal a love triangle that eventually splits up a Hollywood power couple. For reporters, the information could provide a chance to break an explosive story.

To get someone’s phone records, an investigator could simply call the phone company posing as a customer, then glide past security questions posed by customer service agents by using the SSN or other information obtained in a simple database search.

“They’ll ask you security questions that only you should know, but any good investigator can find through databases,” Hanks explains.

Pretexting received a lot of attention in the scandal surrounding Murdoch’s News of the World, and it surfaced at the center of a 2006 scandal here in the United States involving the technology company Hewlett-Packard. Determined to find out who was leaking sensitive information about the company’s strategic plans to reporters, HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn authorized a secret investigation of the company’s board of directors, which HP later acknowledged included the use of pretexting by the investigators to obtain board members’ phone records. In the wake of the HP scandal, Congress passed a law making pretexting for phone records illegal, which President George W. Bush signed in early 2007.

Hanks and a number of other investigators contacted by FRONTLINE say that following the passage of the new law, they stopped doing phone-record searches. But one PI told FRONTLINE that he had recently received an unsolicited fax promising records of “all long-distance calls made in a one-month period and the dates they were made on” for a rate of $100.

Hanks says that the scandal at News of the World has given him second thoughts about his career. Though his work has lead to big scoops, including helping break the story of Heidi Fleiss, the so-called “Hollywood Madam,” for years, he says, he’s helped tabloid reporters prey on people’s lives: “I only made a living because of other people’s suffering.” He says he’s tired of seeing facts in stories get twisted, papers baiting readers with celebrity gossip only to print something about a relative far outside the public eye, or publishing rumors about a now deceased movie star who can’t speak up or sue.

Hanks continues to work for the “legitimate news” — the television networks and mainstream print publications — and he spends some time installing security camera systems. But it’s time, he says, to walk away from the tabloids.

Veteran police reporter Graeme McLagan says Scotland Yard has reached a new low in the phone-hacking scandal—but it has a dismal history of corruption and embarrassing links to the tabloids. Why the British police need to shape up to regain their reputation as honest enforcers.

By being too close to The News of the World, the Metropolitan Police (aka Scotland Yard), like the Conservative government, stands accused of exercising bad judgment, of being too trusting and of demonstrating willful blindness. The British public’s trust in the media, police, and politicians is at a dismal new low.

The tabloid press has never been held in high esteem. Trust in politicians fell further after the recent expenses scandal, which resulted in prison for some MPs who had falsified claims. The police were seen as trying to clean up their act. But the latest exposures have left the force thoroughly demoralised.

Rank-and-file officers expressed disgust on learning that Sir Paul Stephenson, who recently resigned as Met commissioner because of the phone-hacking scandal, obtained £12,000 worth of free hospitality from a friend at a health farm, whose PR was being run by a former deputy editor of The News of the World.

One detective said: “It’s shocking that very senior officers have accepted hospitality, particularly from The News of the World, when ordinary officers are warned not to accept a free meal from, say, a restaurant owner, in case that compromises us in the future. And we’re not supposed to even speak to reporters without clearing it with the press office beforehand.”

What has also surprised is the level of job-swapping, the so-called revolving door between News International titles and the Met. A quarter of the force’s press officers came from the Murdoch stable. Unreported until a few days ago was that Neil Wallis, former deputy editor of The News of the World at the time of the phone hacking, was taken on at £1,000 a day to provide help and advice to the head of the news operation.

His appointment is now described as “appalling” by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, which has recently hauled various senior police officers before it. But at the time, no one within the Met appears to have expressed any concern, or worry about how it might be viewed outside.

Same with Andy Hayman, formerly assistant commissioner and No. 3 in the Met’s hierarchy. He had meals with News International executives while in charge of the phone-hacking investigation, and within weeks of resigning from the Met in 2008 started writing a column for Rupert Murdoch’s flagship paper, The Times.

“It’s extraordinary,” said the Home Affairs Committee, “that he did not realize what the public perception of such contacts would be, or, if he did realize, he did not care that confidence in the impartiality of the police would be seriously undermined.”

The committee’s report described Hayman’s conduct during the phone-hacking investigation and his session in front of the MPs as both unprofessional and inappropriate.

He displayed “an attitude of complacency,” with one likening him to “a dodgy geezer.”

However, in joining the Murdoch paper, Hayman was doing no more than what was done by his former boss, the commissioner Sir John Stevens, now Lord Stevens. At one of Stevens’ retirement parties late in 2004, some were surprised to see Rebekah Wade (now Brooks) there. She and the commissioner were clearly on close terms. All was explained a little later when he started a column for The News of the World.

When Rees was arrested for a third time over the Daniel Morgan murder, invoices from The News of the World were found at his home detailing payments for information he had provided, including on “Will’s girl,” apparently a reference to Prince William’s then-girlfriend, Kate Middleton.

In fact, as commissioner, Stevens was responsible for encouraging more openness by the Met, writing in his memoirs that he “made himself available” to national newspaper editors, naming six, the first three being Piers Morgan (Daily Mirror), Rebekah Wade (Sun), and Andy Coulson (News of the World). All three went on to play parts in the phone-hacking scandal, with Coulson being forced to resign because of it. He later became David Cameron’s press officer until he had to resign from that, too.

Like Hayman, Stevens also knew a lot about leaks of confidential information, and newspapers’ use of private investigators who employed corrupt police. He was in charge of a fresh anti-corruption drive by the Met.

During the 1980s and 1990s, London police were beset with stories of organized police corruption.

Detectives were taking thousands of pounds from criminals, stealing heavy drugs, and then recycling them through informants.

There was also increasing concern about the involvement of private investigators who were interfering with investigations, “blagging” information, and employing corrupt officers, feeding tabloid newspapers’ growing demand for information on celebrities...read more

Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has slammed the DWP over changes to disability benefits, saying Iain Duncan Smith’s department broke the law with a botched consultation after trying to cover up negative responses from the public.In a letter to disability minister Maria Miller (below), the Committee backs the Spartacus report, produced by disability activists and criticises the DWP’s refusal to publish 5,500 consultation responses received on the Welfare Reform Act.

“Publication of such material late in the legislative process, or after its completion, prevents full scrutiny of policy decisions by Parliament and others.”

Disability activists will eventually force disabled toilet-using Duncan Smith to publish the responses under freedom of information – but too late to have an impact on the Act, which was passed on the 29 February. The letter from committee chair Dr Hywel Francis MP was dated 6th March, but could not be published until it was reported to Parliament yesterday.The letter in the wake news that GPs in Scotland have called for an immediate end to the controversial ATOS work capability assessments on the grounds that they could have a devastating impact on patients’ health.,,,read more

Skygate and CashforCameron scandals set stage for open conflict between HMG and the Murdoch mafia

The ‘No honour among thieves’ maxim is perhaps the best way to describe the current conflict between HM Government and the Murdoch mafia.

At the weekend, the Sunday Times revealed a donations scandal at the heart of the Tory Party and Rupert Murdoch called for an “inquiry with consequences”. Obviously not thinking of the Leveson farce…

But the demand for an inquiry coming from Murdoch and his Sunday Times, embroiled in Fraudgate corruption, is completely hollow and does the CashforCameron scandal a great disservice.

Panorama’s ‘TV Pirates’ hit back at Murdoch on Monday and landed News Corp with its biggest headache to date in the multi-layered corruption scandal unraveling on the world stage. Medusa pales by comparison.

Many people have drawn the conclusion that the CashforCameron revelation in the Sunday Times was a mere revenge attack but one that has caused the Prime Minister deep embarrassment.

The desire in the Tory Party now is to strike back at the Murdoch mafia that helped put them in power before Hackgate erupted.

Cameron has the power through Ofcom to end News Corp’s domination of BSkyB and likely send Murdoch out of the UK permanently. If Murdoch loses control of BSkyB, it is indubitable that the board of News Corp will move to unseat him.

Murdoch of course, could unseat David Cameron first if he uses the dirt in his past. MI5 uncovered a ‘dark secret’ about Cameron but refused to disclose the damning material.

Allegations that a News Corp. subsidiary hacked pay-TV access codes of a rival broadcaster and that a hacker in the pay of the company pirated rival satellite channels in Italy could threaten the conglomerate’s core business of broadcasting, satellite, and pay television. ..read more

David Cameron faced fresh questions about political donations last night after it emerged that a British subsidiary of a company owned by a Palestinian billionaire had given £173,500 to the Conservative Party.

David Cameron faces another day of questions over "cash for access"Photo: ITN

By Cal Flyn and Gordon Rayner

Between Oct 2009 and May last year the Tories accepted five separate donations from CC Property, whose sole income is from rent paid to it by another Tory donor, Consolidated Contractors International (UK).

Both companies are owned by Said Khoury, a construction magnate based in Athens.

A director of the companies disclosed yesterday that he had met David Cameron, while another director is a close friend of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son and one-time heir Saif al-Islam.

Electoral law states that political parties can only be funded by people registered to vote in this country, or by British companies.

Jack Straw, the former home secretary, has written to the Electoral Commission calling for an investigation into allegations that the Conservative Party is prepared to accept donations from companies based overseas. ...read more